"No?"
"To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. The young
ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating
library."
"Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?"
"Yes, in certain ways--to a certain degree."
"It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," said the elder
musingly. "We think it is an affair of epochs and of nations. It's
really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilised and the
other a barbarian. I've occasionally met young girls who were so
brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make
civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild
beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. Yet
they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful
of the things that these young animals despised."
"I don't think that is exactly the case with the Lapham family," said
the son, smiling. "The father and mother rather apologised about not
getting time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it."
"They are quite advanced!"
"They are going to have a library in their Beacon Street house."
"Oh, poor things! How are they ever going to get the books together?"
"Well, sir," said the son, colouring a little, "I have been indirectly
applied to for help."
"You, Tom!" His father dropped back in his chair and laughed.
"I recommended the standard authors," said the son.
"Oh, I never supposed your PRUDENCE would be at fault, Tom!"
"But seriously," said the young man, generously smiling in sympathy
with his father's enjoyment, "they're not unintelligent people. They
are very quick, and they are shrewd and sensible."
"I have no doubt that some of the Sioux are so. But that is not saying
that they are civilised. All civilisation comes through literature
now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilisation by
talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it.
But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we
must barbarise. Once we were softened, if not polished, by religion;
but I suspect that the pulpit counts for much less now in civilising."
"They're enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; and they
go a great deal to lectures. The Colonel prefers them with the
stereopticon."
"They might get a something in that way," said the elder thoughtfully.
"Yes, I suppose one must take those things into account--especially the
newspapers and the lectures. I doubt if the theatre is a factor in
civilisation among us. I dare say it doesn't deprave a great deal, but
from what I've seen of it I should say that it was intellectually
degrading. Perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; I don't
know. Tom!" he added, after a moment's reflection. "I really think I
ought to see this patron of yours. Don't you think it would be rather
decent in me to make his acquaintance?"
"Well, if you have the fancy, sir," said the young man. "But there's
no sort of obligation. Colonel Lapham would be the last man in the
world to want to give our relation any sort of social character. The
meeting will come about in the natural course of things."
"Ah, I didn't intend to propose anything immediate," said the father.
"One can't do anything in the summer, and I should prefer your mother's
superintendence. Still, I can't rid myself of the idea of a dinner.
It appears to me that there ought to be a dinner."
"Oh, pray don't feel that there's any necessity."
"Well," said the elder, with easy resignation, "there's at least no
hurry."
"There is one thing I don't like," said Lapham, in the course of one of
those talks which came up between his wife and himself concerning
Corey, "or at least I don't understand it; and that's the way his
father behaves. I don't want to force myself on any man; but it seems
to me pretty queer the way he holds off. I should think he would take
enough interest in his son to want to know something about his
business. What is he afraid of?" demanded Lapham angrily. "Does he
think I'm going to jump at a chance to get in with him, if he gives me
one? He's mightily mistaken if he does. I don't want to know him."
"Silas," said his wife, making a wife's free version of her husband's
words, and replying to their spirit rather than their letter, "I hope
you never said a word to Mr. Corey to let him know the way you feel."
"I never mentioned his father to him!" roared the Colonel. "That's the
way I feel about it!"
"Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn't have them think we
cared the least thing in the world for their acquaintance. We
shouldn't be a bit better off. We don't know the same people they do,
and we don't care for the same kind of things."
Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication.
"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know them? Who
began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's."
"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham quietly;
"and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I want we should hold
ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet
them half-way or not, just as we choose."
"That's what grinds me," cried her husband. "Why should we wait for
them to make the advances? Why shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any
better than we are? My note of hand would be worth ten times what
Bromfield Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. I
haven't loafed my life away."
"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've done exactly.
It's what you are."
"Well, then, what's the difference?"
"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any
trouble, if you don't think of it. But he's been all his life in
society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk
about the things that society people like to talk about, and
you--can't."